bob dylan – Don't Gel Too Soon

Big Birthday Memory #7: Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still ….??

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from April 17, 2007.

Saturday night we went to my friend Rona’s 60th birthday party in LA. The photo is me, Rona and our Today Show colleague Coby. It was really fun – how often does Famous Amos bake you cookies and Brian Wilson sing to you on a Bel Air tennis court turned party heaven? How often do you see photos of yourself, your friend and your husband at Today Show shoots and crazy parties? And how often, in the unexpected chill of an April Los Angeles evening, do you see a pile of blankets for guests that includes the one you made their now 14-year-old son when he was born?

I’ve written about Rona before but Saturday night was a real reminder of the nature of a gifted friend. She asked everyone to stand up. Those who knew her 5 years or less, sit down. Then ten years. Then fifteen. We were feeling pretty cocky since we were in the 20 years or less category – until we saw how many people – from New York, DC, Hawaii, San Francisco, LA and God knows where else – were standing at 30 – and even 40 years! And Rick and I knew many of them; we’d been to birthday parties or holiday events or just dinner with them over the years. I once heard someone quote Wendy Wasserstein as saying that you could judge someone’s character by how well they kept their friends. In that as in so many other ways she was a star.

On the tables were CDs for all of us – with a photo of her at Woodstock on the cover (one that I’d used in our 20 year anniversary piece (it was really great) to close it out. Sunday I was driving around LA while my husband was at his conference so I stuck the CD into the player. The next thing I knew I was driving down the 10 Freeway in tears — not sweet little showers but huge wracking sobs. Not really sadness, it was more a recognition of all the treasured time that has passed – of how much I loved so much of it and how real it still feels to me. I’ve never read Remembrance of Things Past but I’m told that the entire epic emerges from memories evoked from the smell of a Madeline (a kind of French cookie – they sell them at Starbucks I think.)

Well each song – Van Morrison or Bob Dylan or Paul Simon or Marvin Gaye took me someplace. The thing is – sad as I was, I was also absurdly grateful to have the memories and moments so powerfully evoked by the music. Not until I hit 60 did I realize you really DO get older – that some things are in the past for good. When the music is there, though, nothing’s really gone. Memories and senses arise in all their glory and float me back where I came from. Not for long – and not entirely – but enough to remind me of the privileges of my life and the wonders of life itself. Corny but oh so true – music brings the gift of memory and joy. Yet another thing to thank birthday girl Rona for adding to my life. Happy birthday one more time, my sister.

A Quick Trip with Leonard Cohen

I can see the room. It’s a little scruffy and smells like pot and incense. (Yes that’s a cliche but there you are.) There’s a mattress on the floor, crazy Berkeley posters on the wall, a turntable and speakers, one window over the bed, another on the long wall. Lots of bookcases, record albums, a coffee grinder for stems and seeds, a big old stuffed chair, and us.

It was a long time ago. Hasn’t crossed my mind in years. Then, right there, on the Spotify singer-songwriter channel, comes a young Leonard Cohen singing this:

Music is dangerous. Suddenly I was back in Massachusetts almost half a century ago, when Suzanne, and Sisters of Mercy too, were part of my lexicon, along with everything from Milord

to Ruby Tuesday

to Blowin’ in the Wind.

Years ago Garry Trudeau published a Doonesbury thta included the line “You’ve stolen the sound track of my life!” I don’t remember the context but it’s disconcertinly accurate, as he usually is. Every song is a movie of the past, running — sometimes joyously, sometimes with enormous sadness, in my head.

It was such a different time, full of righteous anger and, at the same time, joy at being alive, sometimes in love, always part of the changes taking place all around us, many at our instigation.

Now, as we face the rage and disappointment of many of our children and their peers, it’s kind of heartbreaking to look back with such nostalgia at a time that they clearly see as debauched and destructive and, even worse, egocentric and selfish.

It’s paricularly hard when these songs rise up, so transporting. Everyone, if they’re lucky, has fond recollections of the younger times in their lives. But for me, as the music carries me there, it was so much more. Hope, freedom, equality, beauty, love and peace — every song an anthem moving us forward. And lovers in a scruffy dorm room, a little bit stoned, listening, and sometimes, singing along.

All Hail Rock and Roll

I don't spend my time talking about the "olden days" – really I don't. Working on the web has kept me very much in the present. But tonight I watched a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony retrospective and since you have to have given music at least 25 performing years to be inducted most of the performers were closer to my age than to that of my buddies here on the Web. And wow.

I feel the way you feel 2/3 of the way down a fantastic black diamond slope with the wind in your hair and frost on your ear lobes and your heart pounding. Where else is there the power that music brings to us? We go where it takes us — return to places we'd forgotten we knew, find pride in the memories we cherish and an abashed amusement in those that might have been a bit – um — less luminous. Our moods, our clothes, the way we're driving, or eating, or doing less discussable things, changes with the music around us. It's bits of soul reflected.

I was blessed to be at a couple of the most amazing inductions; I've written about that before but some of those moments appeared tonight and I could feel again the hair raising thrill of watching Ben E King and The Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan and Billy Joel and Mick Jagger and dozens (literally dozens) of others performing together. Coming as we all do from a generation that did so many things as a tribe, it's particularly moving to watch them trade glances and cues — such a familiar pattern.

I love my life now and am so grateful to be a part of the explosion of the new connected world, but I am also grateful for the years those musicians gave us. They are brothers and sisters and inspirations and former fantasies and just plain fun. I know how many died of overdoses, I know there are seamy stories and I know that there are wonderful musicians who have followed them and will themselves end up on that stage when enough years have passed but my time was a wonderful time to be young and loving music. And once again tonight I remembered how many moments of my own personal Hall of Fame were accompanied by, or part of, or generated from – the music they gave us all.

What Do You Get When You Cross Bruce Springsteen and Jon Stewart?

Well what else is there to say?

Memories of Peter, Paul, and Mary Travers

The first time I ever heard Peter Paul and Mary I was 15 and spending the summer at a writing program at Exeter Academy – the first year they ever let “girls” into the school at all. I remember loving Blowin’ in the Wind, If I Had a Hammer and of course, Puff. I remember visiting another student’s home in Concord where her older brother, already in college, told me that the three were just “popularizers of Bob Dylan songs” and scornfully complaining that I should be listening to Dylan not them. (I didn’t find Bob Dylan until later – junior year, I guess.) I thought he was nuts To me, Peter Paul and Mary were an introduction to music that was about things I cared about: civil rights, war, peace and love — from a more political perspective.

From then on, through high school, into college and “out into the world” Peter Paul and Mary held a special place in my life. We seemed to cross paths often. We played their music all the time, of course. My sister and I saw them at a summer concert in Pittsburgh (my long-suffering mom driving us, of course.) I remember watching them sing at the 1963 March on Washington, and later seeing them at Wolf Trap with a blind date. And, most profoundly, I remember seeing them quite literally, save lives in Grant Park at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. Hordes of demonstrators were coming over a bridge into the part of the park right outside the Hilton. There had been trouble, lots of trouble, for at least days and this would be another terrible confrontation. Then, from nowhere, Peter, Paul and Mary started to sing. The demonstrators slowly converged around their platform, diverted from certain misery. It was quite a thing.

Here’s what else I remember. Mary Travers herself, who died today. She was a powerful model: not just her deep, resonant voice but also her powerful, sure presence, on stage and off. She was brave and funny and looked amazing. We all knocked ourselves out trying to have straight hair like hers: ironed it, slept with it wrapped around orange juice cans. She was a powerful presence.

Of course, part of her power, and that of Peter and Paul was their commitment. Where they were needed, they came. Civil rights marches, peace marches, the McCarthy presidential campaign” even regional and local union struggles. It was a signal to the rest of us: if we can show up, so can you. And we did. As another friend wrote to me tonight: “I just saw the news story. Can’t believe how much of our history was tied up with them.”

Making my way out of my office, thinking about writing this, I started singing to myself: “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane.” But I couldnt finish. I was close to tears. It’s happened so often this summer – icons of my life fading from view. Teddy Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, Robert McNamara, Don Hewitt, Ellie Greenwich, Patrick Swayze just yesterday, and now Mary. Each representing so many lives; so many memories.

I keep writing here because somehow I don’t want to stop. This ought to do it, though. (The other guy is John Denver)

MUSIC, POLITICS, PATTI SMITH, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, ROBERT HUNTER AND A LONG WALK

For weeks I’ve been writing about politics here, but today – some personal politics. They say the personal is political, and for me, the personal is music (and political) — and music makes all the difference — through time, sadness, joy, loneliness, political anguish, even spiritual connection.

I’ve started walking every morning – around two miles. Part of the reason is that I never get to listen to music anymore, so on my walks, I pretty much let my iPod take me wherever "shuffle" wants to go. For while we moved from Bruce to Great Big Sea to Juno. Then things got serious – an anthem really, of a time in my life when I valued awareness, aliveness, presence above all else: along came Me and Bobby McGee. Kris Kristofferson wrote it but this is one of the few videos I could find of him performing it – Janis Joplin’s version was the famous one. Still — it was this version, Kristofferson’s, that spoke to me.

A cut-loose road song and a love song too. "Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose." I remember my mother railing against this chorus — claiming that freedom was real and important and much more than "nothin’ left to lose" and she was probably right, but then… Then that road life was one I craved but never had the nerve to undertake and this song was my chance to travel along. Later, on Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner did a monologue as "Bobby McGee" who had moved home, and whose "mom even kept my room for me." She’d given up. There I sat on our water bed in our Upper West Side apartment in our married, new baby life, and cried. It was way too familiar. Made me face the gap between what I had wished and what I was, that gap we all face as we enter "grown up" lives, with kids and responsibilities.

Then, around the time my walk reached Georgia Avenue, I traveled to London’s Grosvenor Square, and Scarlet Begonias. The Robert Hunter/Grateful Dead song included this description: "Wind in the willows playin’ tea for two; The sky was yellow and the sun was blue, Strangers stoppin’ strangers just to shake their hand, Everybody”s playing in the heart of gold band." It sounds comical now, I suppose, and it was really about Dead concerts, but I remember so many marches where people passed food around, each taking what they needed, and driving on the turnpikes on the way as we gave M&Ms to each tollbooth operator along with our quarters and even, at the first Clinton inauguration, being hugged by some guy I’d never met as I stood alone, close to tears (again) when Bob Dylan came out and surprised everyone.

Continue reading MUSIC, POLITICS, PATTI SMITH, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, ROBERT HUNTER AND A LONG WALK

SAD MUSIC, GREAT BIG SEA, STONE PONIES, BEATLES – RIDING THE WAYBACK MACHINE

Have you ever heard a song that caught you up short and brought you almost to tears? Boston to St. John — sung by Great Big Sea, does that to me, no matter how many times I hear it. In fact, when we pass over St. John on the way to Europe and it shows up on the map on the little TV, I get weepy just hearing it in my head. What is it about this romantic, acoustic song accompanied by a pipe and a guitar? Just listen (this one has lyrics posted) – it’s a nice thing to end the week with.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over the wonder of what music has come to mean to me, again. Of course I was a typical teen fan, and then in my college years obsessed with Bob Dylan, the Beatles, The Doors, Cream, anything by Ellie Greenwich, anything from Motown, Linda Ronstadt (especially the Stone Ponies phase) – listen to this primo girl song:

I also loved the great folkies like Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Joan Baez ( oh – and Peter, Paul and Mary (need I go on?) and Simon and Garfunkel — among others. Then I went into semi-retirement. I made mix tapes for my kids – Good Day Sunshine, Hippy Hippy Shake, Here Comes the Sun, the Garden Song, Carolina… you name it. And we sang a lot. But the deep, gut-wrenching feeling you get when the music drills right to the center of your soul — that all came back more recently. And differently. Once, my Deadhead son asked me why I had never gone to one of their concerts. The answer was peculiar, I guess. I heard all my music for free at marches. And peace rallies. Who needed to buy tickets?

The music was, literally, the soundtrack to my life. Every song I hear pulls a movie into my head — me on a bus to Manhattan for a march, in a boat on Paradise Pond with my boyfriend, dancing like crazy someplace or other. Now, though, the music seems to bring the mood to me, rather than meeting it half way. I can be moved from zero to 60 – solid to weepy – in about one chorus. Maybe it’s the passage of time. Maybe it’s that I hear far more of it alone. Maybe it’s just that much of what I listen to evokes other times in my life. Today, driving home, I had my iPod plugged into the car radio, on random shuffle, and Pete Seeger singing All My Life’s a Circle did it. Again.

Of course, anything from the Juno soundtrack just makes me laugh. And lots of Bruce just makes me want to dance. It’s not all sad stuff. I guess I should try to figure it out, but I’d rather just think I’m newly available, or RE-newly available, to those feelings. And be grateful for the music that brings them.

HOW ELSE WOULD I GET TO JOHN MELLENKAMP’S HOUSE?

February 22nd is Rona Elliot’s birthday. She’s the one in the red dress next to John Mellenkamp – I’m the one on the right in the weird shirt. The woman in the middle is Kathy Schenker, a wonderful person who was then his publicist. We were in Bloomington Indiana, at Mellenkamp’s house (honest!) to interview him about his new album (I think they were still albums then.)

This kind of adventure is what Rona has brought into my life, along with a deep abiding friendship and a sense of respect for her that I feel for few others. She is courageous, funny, smart, cool, great, did I say smart?, and the best production partner I ever had. We both worked for the TODAY SHOW. In 1988 I was told I wasn’t assigned to cover the New Hampshire primary and was really – really – upset. Rona laughed – "I have something so much better for you", she said. And she did.

We went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in Manhattan. Bruce Springsteen inducted Bob Dylan, Elton John inducted the Drifters. Also honored and present, the three surviving Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and more. AND they all sang together. AND we stayed up all night and cut a piece about it for the show. A good one. I don’t think I have had many experiences that were that thrilling – professionally or as an audience member. But what’s really important about it is that that sort of joyous event — and the desire to share it — is part of the package that is Rona.

A friend for all seasons, she never forgets or loses someone she loves — and believe me when she’s in your life you’re glad she’s there. Not just for Rock and Roll shows (although we’ve shared many amazing times) but also for giving my kids "I Love Heavy Metal" shirts to "scare your mom" and volunteering at an orphanage and being a spectacular mother and wife and always open to new ideas and experiences every moment she’s alive. I’m so so grateful to share the brief times in our life that are still available in our coast-to-coast lives. That night we saw Bruce Springsteen induct Bob Dylan into the Hall of Fame, he ended by saying – "and to quote one of your songs, ‘You was the brother that I never had.’" Well I have two wonderful sisters but Rona – you’re the other amazing — as you call it — sistah — that I’m glad I have. Happy Birthday.